Reducing Anxiety Naturally – Case Study

Life is tough, lets not kid ourselves otherwise.

There are many reasons for anxiety, some obvious, some not so obvious. Trying to sort out our issues is an ongoing day to day task. Reducing anxiety naturally has many different aspects and one-size doesn’t always fit all.

My neighbour is a case in point. Everything was going really well, then her son got the flu, so she took time off work to care for him, then she got sick. So she felt really ill, then really down, she’d not been able to work for 15 days and had no leave or sick-pay available from her job. Then she started to worry and slowly the downward spiral started to cause anxiety.

This Illness for her, brought on a state of anxiety which she had not known before. The result of the flu virus weakened her and reduced her energy levels. So she felt her mental capacity was reduced and her anxiety took hold. She started buying pre-packaged food and worried constantly about the future.

She spoke to me about it and we worked out some strategies for her to review her bills, speaking to her service providers about part payments. Next we looked at her nutritional status and optimal vitamin status, and lastly did some positive thinking exercises.

So easy I hear you say, or perhaps you are thinking reducing anxiety naturally my foot! Thats just organising her, why couldn’t she do it herself, seems obvious to me!

Sometimes we need to ask for help, simple.

So my neighbour asked for help as we were chatting in the street, because of my background I was able to help. What if she had asked another friend? Well that friend would have probably given the same suggestions regarding finances. Would they have been trained to suggest nutritional changes that didn’t break the budget but rather helped her to budget?

Because she’s a friend as well as a neighbour, I gave her 2 hypnotherapy sessions to get her thought patterns back on track. Unfortunately the supplements she had bought over the last few months, just weren’t worth the money she had spent. Product quality from the shops just isn’t the same as when you see a practitioner.

The products on her shelves were vitamins C, D, E and 2 different multi B’s, a few cold and flu remedies and some really dire party plan probiotics.

How to sort the wheat from the chaff.

The vitamin C was just ascorbic acid, not much good unless you’re trying to preserve jam really. Ascorbic acid will however make you ‘go’ if you’re constipated, so it does have a use. As it was in tablet form it could be taken with the multi-vitamin. One of these had a number of minerals etc which would mean more of the vitamin C was ‘bio-available’ to the body. When you’re buying vitamin C you need to make sure there are multiple forms and something to aid uptake or recirculation, otherwise you really are just flushing your money down the loo!

The multi-vitamins looked good. The packaging was impressive. The marketing unique. The pills themselves unfortunately were no better than what is available in the supermarket, considering the price she paid it was a very poor deal. To gain enough from the ingredients we needed to double the dose and hope that she didn’t have any genetic issues with some of the ingredients. Thankfully she was fine, just a very expensive sort of fine!

Vitamin D:

Vitamin D; her’s was a very overpriced basic quality product. Oversold by the party plan multi level marketer. It was listed as ‘in a solution with vegetable oil’ – Vitamin D & E, unlike vitamin C are a ‘fat soluble’ vitamins, so should be taken with foods containing fats or in a solution containing them. Although in saying that some practitioner products are micelles form, but that’s another story.

Vegetable oil… often Palm Oil, as it’s cheap. It’s not cheap on the environment though, whether it’s from ‘renewable resources’ or not. Yep, that’s another full story as well! “Oh but, it’s only a tiny bit I’m taking”… yeh, on a daily basis, along with lots of other hood-winked people, which makes it more than a ‘tiny-bit’! Olive oil there is evidence for taking, fish oil is great, but vegetable oil??? Nope!

Thankfully the D & E were both out of date, so we discussed being conned, rather than about taking them! Vitamin D is best absorbed at lunchtime, 10 minutes of UVB, rather than the harming UVA in the morning. So it’s better for you, lunch on the front verandah for her when home, and outside when at work. Easy switch. Did you know if you put your mushrooms out in the sun, frills up they make a massive amount of vitamin D for you to have in your mushroom stroganoff?

Vitamin E, some basics:

Vitamin E like vitamin D is available in our diet. I’ve just googled and copied and pasted the search page:

1) Almonds. 1 oz: 7.3 mg (27% DV)

2) Spinach. 1 bunch: 6.9 mg (26% DV)

3) Sweet Potato. 1 Tbsp: 4.2 mg (15% DV)

4) Avocado. 1 whole: 2.7 mg (10% DV)

5) Wheat germ. 1 ounce: 4.5 mg (17% DV)

6) Sunflower seeds. 2 Tbsp: 4.2 mg (15% DV)

So one ounce of almonds at my house is 20 almonds. I always eat more than a tablespoon of sweet potato. One bunch of spinach is easy. So I can easily reach my daily value without really trying.

So… Reducing Anxiety Naturally?

My neighbour made some diet changes and received the support she needed from a friend. The support and understanding from creditors helped considerably.

She changed her thought processes to positive ones. Every time she had a negative thought she wrote the positive alternative on a post-it-note. Then she posted them around her house on mirrors, the fridge and beside her bed.

As her nutrition improved so did her energy levels; processed food although quick and easy, often lacks basic nutrients due to cooking and storage processes. Her lentil soups with spinach, nettles (from the garden) herbs and bone broth are nutrient dense. Bones bought direct from the farmer at the market are cheap & delicious. Bones cooked overnight in her crockpot made a nutritious stock base. Adding 1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar to cooking improved gelatin, B vitamins, essential amino acids amounts in the stock. Animal nutrients give not only a delicious flavour, but easily increase your nutrient intake, without breaking the budget.

Yes, people often need more than this. Targeted nutrients, comprehensive hypnotherapy, intervention techniques and support. Here is the capacity to start small and work up, ask for help as my neighbour did and see the improvements yourself.